John Edwards, the NZ privacy commissioner, explains why he has determined Facebook to be non-compliant with the New Zealand Privacy Act – and why he deleted the app.

,… “Is Facebook subject to the New Zealand Privacy Act?”

… A complaint to my office has put that question front and centre. Every New Zealander has the right to find out what information an agency holds about them. It is a right of constitutional significance, and even this week’s Dotcom case noted that the right of individuals to access, challenge and to correct personal data is generally regarded as “perhaps the most important privacy protection safeguard” (Dotcom v Crown Law 2018 [2018] NZHRRT 7 para 69).

Facebook failed to meet its obligations under the Privacy Act, and when given a statutory demand from my office to produce the information at issue so that I could discharge my statutory duty to the requester to review it, Facebook initially refused to provide it, and then asserted that Facebook was not subject to the New Zealand Privacy Act, and was therefore under no obligation to provide it.

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